(no subject)
Anyone remember that update a while ago where i said "Here comes the difference to this piece of work compared to the last 2 I just mentioned, it's VERY depressing. No comedy in here people, just story. Depending on what I think of the finished product I may post it on LJ, so far I only have about 2 pages written, but it's going well."
Well, here's the first draft, hell, it's probably/most likely the last draft. It's also 6 pages long. I tried to make sure I didn't sound like I was whining about my life, cuz I definitly ain't. Anyways, ENGOY.
The Omega Waiting Room
The first experience with death that I can recall happened back in kindergarten. There was this kid that I sat beside, the first kid I sat beside, everyone was sitting beside each other for the first time. I sat beside him because, well, I have no idea why i sat beside him, I think it was because Miss Good was getting the class settled down. The toys hadn't been used yet, recess was miles away, and the unbreakable straw wrapper on my juice-box was getting ready to laugh at me. When Lunch rolled around, this kid would bring out his (what I thought to be) forbidden lunch. A CHOCOLATE SANDWICH! Later on in life I would realize that it was actually Nutella, and as I'm writing this I just realized why that, although I've never actually eaten Nutella, I've always told people I hate it. Sitting beside someone for hours at a time just became interesting. We would get in trouble when we would make Ninja Turtle weapons out of the building blocks. (Raphael's Si's were the easiest to make), and we would challenge each other as to who could count to 100 the fastest. Oreos were cream middle with a chocolate outer cookie, recess was 15 minutes of happy hour, and school wasn't looking like such a big deal after all.
On a Monday just like any other, I go to school and on the bus I'm already thinking about getting some quality time with the trike everyone always fought over. I sit in the seat that was built just for me, and I look around at the rest of the class. All these clean cut kids had been gotten ready by someone else, and we were safe in our infant suburbia. The only thing out of place was me, I wasn't sitting beside anyone. Not a big deal for older students, but at this age, imagine waking up in the morning with your neighbors house missing and there's nothing left but wet ground and pipes. Definitely something you'd alert a higher authority about. Miss Good told me that my neighbour was sick. Not a big deal, lots of children at this age get the sniffles, and chicken pox was on most of these kids resumes. For about a week I sat, wondering..... with no life experience there's not much to wonder about, I can't remember what I thought about it all, all I can remember is that it was getting lonely counting to One Hundred.
Two weeks, about 2 weeks since he became sick I'm told that I'm not getting my neighbour back, ever. I don't know how I reacted, I don't know if I reacted, all I know is that I became aware of a new natural judgment. And it was going to become an even closer friend.
Grade 8, it was the second month of school and I hadn't a care in the world, or many friends. In the time between I had moved from towns, moved schools, and moved down the social ladder by leaps and bounds. I was a big cheese at my old school, but then again I had grown up with the rest of the cheese. This time around I was nothing but a seat filler in my classroom, having a few connections to keep me going, but not nearly enough to move me up. Which probably explains why my best friend was from a different school, and why I was always home by 4:00 to catch the latest episode of Pokemon, trust me, I knew every last Poke-name and Poke-Rap. I wake up on a Saturday and as usual I plan on calling the best friend to chill, perhaps on a hill. I go downstairs to watch some TV and I find my mother and father sitting in the living room. This doesn't seem like a big event, but at this time they're usually off doing grown up things, they both had a very decided look on their faces, so they called down my sister from her sleep to tell us both what they had decided.
My Father had been very sick this past month, and I had been told it was Pneumonia. With Anne and I on the couch, they calmly and gently told us that my father had lung cancer. Which explained the oxygen tube he had to use for the past few days. He quit smoking 9 years ago and it lay dorement in his chest for all this time. My sister burst into tears, I burst into nothing. She understood a seriousness that I had no idea of, hell I was so clueless that I still wanted to hang out at my friends that day. They told us that he was going into treatment to try and fight it, and I thought my Dad, being the strong Lithuanian that he was, never had a problem winning a fight in court, let alone an illness. Things were gonna be fine. Monday came around and I was told we didn't have to tell people just yet, keep it a family affair. Me being the forgetful child I was had no problem telling my friend Devon at recess while we were walking around the track. He asked how I was with all of this, and I specifically recall saying “pff, I'm fine, whenever I feel down I just bust it out with a good ol' POWERWALK!” as I began to speed away all comically like, hearing laugher far behind me.
Family members always get sick, but my Dad at this point had canceled his yearly trip to Las Vegas with all of his friends, they had gone every year since law school. Now I knew it was bad. Even if that didn't happen I probably would've picked up the fact that it was getting worse as I now had to push my father around the house in a wheelchair. This was escalating quickly. He moved into the other end of the house, for he couldn't make it to his own room anymore, and he couldn't sleep beside anyone because of the pain. My sister started staying home to help him with everyday tasks, which I thought was bogus because I still had to go to school. Although I was given the privilege of picking up his medication from IDA on the way home. I recall seeing the pain of even breathing in his eyes, my Dad was the strongest person alive, he was Captain of the University and High School football teams, he grew up as a farmer, an office wall full of diploma's, and had a lot of people to care about. This was the first time I had seen him ever be so unsure, unsure of survival. Our last Cat “Whiskey” was unsure of survival when she ran away for a night, and came back very sick. Mom found her hiding under the porch in the farthest and darkest corner. Ready and waiting die. My father wasn't ready nor waiting, but you wouldn't know that from his eyes.
The next few days consisted of my mom and dad getting their affairs in order. Wills, paperwork, boring adult stuff. The main thing I recall about this part was when it came time to call family & friends and tell them, since he was going in for treatment that Wednesday. The door to the living room was closed, as I walked in I saw my dad talking on the phone to his best friend Joe, his face was in his hand and there were tears in his eyes. My mom walked up to shut the door and told me my dad just needed to be alone for a little while. I was a little frazzled by it and went back to whatever I was doing.
Wednesday rolled around and my parents were off to Barrie for the first day of his treatment. My sis and I waved bye and got ready for a late night of TV and fun without the rents. Thursday rolled around, and so did my mom that evening, we were all going to Barrie that night, and she wasn't sure when we'd be back. We drove to the general Hospital there and arrived at the same time has my grandparents (my dad's parents), and all boarded the elevator together. I hate the way hospitals smell, nothings else in the world smells the way they do, because nothing else happens the same way as they do in hospitals. Tragedy's down every hallway where you can see people coming to the natural last resort of prayer. I was starting to get nervous. He went in for treatment to fight this thing just yesterday, I was told it was going to be a long a hard process, but we'd go through it as a family. We approached his room in slow motion, I was looking in the rooms on my left as we walked, there was an Indian family in the room beside his, they were all around a sick patient, some holding hands, some praying, some just staring. We got to my father's room and walked in, and this is where I had what alcoholics would call a moment of clarity. I pushed past the blue curtain and saw my dad lying there, immobile and hopped up on more morphine then you could shake a stick at. It hit me what was happening, holy shit did it ever hit me. I went into the washroom that was in his room and cried my eyes out. I was confused, scared, and now traumatized. My hero was not in the room over there, that's not my dad, this isn't happening, it can't.
My grandfather walked into the washroom I was in, I thought he had come in to comfort me, but he was silent. The man had fought poverty, sickness, and Hitler all in a lifetime, was this going to be what breaks him? It was awkward up until he reached over to the paper towels, grabbed two, dried his wrinkly old eyes with one of them, and handed me the other. Neither of us said anything, I was in grade 8, he was in his 80's, and for the first time since we've known each other we were on the exact same level. After a while I pulled myself together and walked back into the room. I stared at my father and got the exact same feeling as before, but I pushed the tears way back as I walked up. I asked him how he was, and he said something I couldn't understand, something along the lines of “hey Jon”. Everyone tried to talk to him for a little while, which there was little point to, he couldn't understand us and we couldn't him. The nurse was going to up the dosage of morphine due to the fact that even being conscious was too much pain for him to bear. The last thing I remember him saying before they knocked him out was “How are the cats?”. My mom responded with “They're fine dear, they're fine, relax”.
There was a oddly strong bond between my father and our cats (Izzy and Cleo). He was never a cat person, he grew up with dogs and preferred something that took orders. He never gave them much attention when we were around and they were never too cuddly with him either. This is why I believe that cat's weren't given the ability to speak, for they never had to say anything to understand everything. Whenever my sister and I would be in a yelling contest, Cleo would run up between us and starting meowing like crazy to make it stop, and we would. With dad it was different. I would sometimes walk downstairs very late at night to get a drink, and I would see my Dad watching TV with Izzy sprawled out on his lap, he was petting him like crazy. Something neither of them would do in public. The cats knew something we didn't, and we never will.
That night at the hospital I had to sleep on a cot with my mom that with built for barely half a person, let alone 2. Needless to say I didn't get much rest that night. The next little while consisted of Family and Friends visiting, an illness I had only known about for 2 weeks was crashing down on me person by person. I would wander the halls of the Hospital, buying issues of Mad magazine at the store they had (which I don't read anymore) and drinking Parlor chocolate milk from the cafeteria (which I refuse to drink anymore). I would read Foxtrot and play Game boy at the end of my dad's bed, and my sister would be reading books beside him holding his hand the entire time. She once pulled an all nighter doing just that. Which I didn't mind because I got to have a cot all to myself for a night.
My grandparents were staying in a guest room down the hall, and one day during visits, the room my dad was in was getting too crowded, so my sister and I went down to talk to them for a while. My grandfather told us amazing stories from the war, and from life, it seemed like an appropriate time to reflect. A very odd thing happened wtih people visiting though, the more people visited, the more people got admitted to that very hospital. Mr Sloazel, a University friend of my dad's was up visiting, but once when he came upstairs he was wearing a cast. Everyone was baffled but apparently he hurt something in his knee on a staircase in that very hospital. My aunt was admitted because of a mental breakdown, for her own brother had passed not but a month ago, and now this, I was far from the only one this illness was hurting.
There was a large cafeteria on the main floor of the Hospital that my mom, sister and I would eat at. It was an intensely depressing place, for the food wasn't the greatest, and most of the other guests were in some kind of crippling emotional pain. I recall how empty I felt when I went through the servery once, the cook cracked a joke as I pushed my Jello from one end to the other. It was a pretty funny joke, I remember because I was confused when I didn't express a single emotion to him. I was talking to my mom back at the table about what was going to happen to us. She tried to come up with some answers, but nothing too uplifting, “we'll pull through” kind of stuff. I thought about life back when we lived in Newmarket. We had a white house, a tree for climbing in the backyard, a pool, we were awesome at the family thing. I had tons of friends at school, I was in the advanced learning courses because I was so damn smart, hell, I even had a girlfriend. We were living it up as the Raciunas family, and there was no end in site. As I snapped back to reality I felt shittier than ever, I pushed my Jello aside and excused myself to the washroom where I proceeded to hit my head against a bathroom stall. Motherfuck.
Sunday, we had been there for 4 days and I was reading Foxtrot yet again at the foot of his bed. My mom was in the room, I remember that because she was the one who was talking to the doctor. He told her that his Kidney's were failing, and that there was nothing that could make them pass. My mom had already accepted my dad's fate, so she accepted the news with minimal tears. The shittiest part of this was that I had no idea what was just said, I wasn't paying much attention and I didn't know that we needed our kidney's to survive. Sunday turned into night and I was watching TV in the waiting room across the hall. My mom walked in and said “don't you want to spend the last time with your father beside him?”. This was news to me, “what do you mean?”. She told me that he wasn't going to make it, so naturally I flipped. I sat in the chair beside her crying and yelling “I'm not going to have a dad” and “what the fuck is going on?”. She calmed me down and said “lets just go be with him”, and we were. That night my mom and sister went to sleep, and I stood leaning against a wall, looking at him wheezing. I left the room and sat in a chair in the hallway. It hurt too much to cry anymore, and not crying was getting painful. So instead I went into shock. The nurse at the desk down the hall gave me some gravol to help settle my stomach. I took it, went to the washroom and threw that right up. Nothing was going to help at this point. Later into the night I went to a garden they had on that floor of the hospital, it had a huge wall of windows letting a lot of depressing moonlight in. This was the perfect spot. I leaned on a railing and stared out for about 30 min when my sister walked by. She had woken up and was looking for me. She walked up and grabbed my shoulder, “you okay?”. I didn't respond, I just stared at her, then back at the window. “Neither am I” she said.
Monday, his breathing had gotten so bad that when they would vacuum out his throat from all the build up it didn't sound any better. Oxygen sounded like glue when it went through his lungs. The doctor's said that cancer almost never takes out a person so quickly, but it had been in him for so long that this was just the breaking point. He only had 1 chemotherapy treatment in what was supposed to take around 6 years to complete. A Priest came by to give my father his last rights, a signal of the final stretch. Not much else happened that day, I had began a routine at the Hospital, so I just did what I normally did, and went to sleep on the cold hard cot. They had found another one for us so I was actually getting some rest every now and then.
Tuesday morning, the nurse woke us up at 5:30 am so we could spend the last few minutes with Zenon. His breathing was so horrible, like jogging and choking at the same time, his body was giving up on him. 50 years about to come to an end, and I was incredibly proud to know him for 12 of those. I was holding his hand as he took his last breath, not wanting to let go. I'll never understand Euthanasia, all I wanted at that moment was for him not to leave, he couldn't speak, he couldn't move, he wasn't even awake. His heartbeat was all I needed to keep me going. I never felt so powerless as when his soul left him. His suffering was over, and ours had just begun. That exact moment is when I became the person I was going to be for the rest of my life. An over-thinking, anxiety filled, tragedy ridden comedian. Mrs Belanger, a good family friend was going to drive us back to Collingwood that morning. As we walked out of the room I saw that same Indian family, they were still all there. I wondered how much longer they would be waiting, and what their outcome would be. She loaded us into the car and we headed off. I fell asleep on the ride home, and I didn't really want to wake up.
Days went by and we were getting everything in order, his wake is really something that's stuck in my head. The amount of people that came was phenomenal, really something to behold. Everyone from Judges that knew him (for he had to chance to soon become one himself), to staff from school. It was really hard seeing my friends walk the visiting line, I didn't know what to say to them, “Hey Joey, how are things with you?” didn't seem appropriate. After the line up beside the coffin bit was done I talked to a lot of friends from school, some I had never even really talked to before. One person in particular was Becca Groves, I don't remember what she said that made it stick in my head so well, all I know is that it was something that made me think how genuinely good people are at whole. Up next was the funeral, and to my astonishment it was more than a full house, it was jammed to the bursting point with people. Too many faces to remember, but not one to forget. When we walked out of the church behind the coffin I didn't know which way to look, I wanted to turn in all directions to see everyone, but I was afraid to make eye contact and let anyone see me. I knew they were all looking, but I didn't need to know. After the burial was complete I had quite the real-time flashback. A whole whack of my Newmarket friends and family had come up to see us, In particular there was my old best buds Brenden & Adrienne, and some other crazy familiar faces.
After all of the scheduled grieving was over I took some time off of school to get my shit back together. I quit the swimming team, for although it was one of the best things to do with my free time, I couldn't take the pressure or competition anymore. Something I kind of regret to this day. After about 2 weeks of time off I was supposed to go to the dentist that morning and then back to school for around lunch, as I was watching Jurassic Park before I was going to leave the doorbell rang. I answered it to find about 5 of my friends from school standing there, (Josh Tarlo, Ryan Murray, Devon Mcgann included). There was a field trip at some career place on Main Street so they split that to come see me. I left my house with them and it felt a whole lot better to get back to real life. I still spent every waking moment thinking about what had happened, so this was the very first time I pretended I was fine, and for the rest of my teenage days I'd be getting very good at it.
I grew up more in those 5 days at the hospital than I have in my entire life. I also believe it's what gave me my sense of humour. A way to cope with my demons instead of becoming some lame Emo jackass. I think about that a lot whenever we visit him at the Stayner Cemetery. My mom's done an unbelievable job of raising us on her own, keeping us in the same house that was supported on a Lawyer's salary. Even now she is moving on, with a new future husband, and more life to live than you can shake a stick at. My sister Anne is at University of Guelph and getting some pretty noice marks. As for me, I'm following all the childhood dreams I concocted so far, which makes me very proud. I know that my Dad is somehow responsible. One thing I can't explain though is what happened to my cat Izzy after Dad passed, he got very weird. He wondered where he was for about a week or two, and then slowly took on a totally different personality. He's still the same jittery little fucker around everyone else, but with us he's unbelievably fun and affectionate, he must know something that I don't.
Zenon Tomas Raciunas
1950 - 2000
Well, here's the first draft, hell, it's probably/most likely the last draft. It's also 6 pages long. I tried to make sure I didn't sound like I was whining about my life, cuz I definitly ain't. Anyways, ENGOY.
The Omega Waiting Room
The first experience with death that I can recall happened back in kindergarten. There was this kid that I sat beside, the first kid I sat beside, everyone was sitting beside each other for the first time. I sat beside him because, well, I have no idea why i sat beside him, I think it was because Miss Good was getting the class settled down. The toys hadn't been used yet, recess was miles away, and the unbreakable straw wrapper on my juice-box was getting ready to laugh at me. When Lunch rolled around, this kid would bring out his (what I thought to be) forbidden lunch. A CHOCOLATE SANDWICH! Later on in life I would realize that it was actually Nutella, and as I'm writing this I just realized why that, although I've never actually eaten Nutella, I've always told people I hate it. Sitting beside someone for hours at a time just became interesting. We would get in trouble when we would make Ninja Turtle weapons out of the building blocks. (Raphael's Si's were the easiest to make), and we would challenge each other as to who could count to 100 the fastest. Oreos were cream middle with a chocolate outer cookie, recess was 15 minutes of happy hour, and school wasn't looking like such a big deal after all.
On a Monday just like any other, I go to school and on the bus I'm already thinking about getting some quality time with the trike everyone always fought over. I sit in the seat that was built just for me, and I look around at the rest of the class. All these clean cut kids had been gotten ready by someone else, and we were safe in our infant suburbia. The only thing out of place was me, I wasn't sitting beside anyone. Not a big deal for older students, but at this age, imagine waking up in the morning with your neighbors house missing and there's nothing left but wet ground and pipes. Definitely something you'd alert a higher authority about. Miss Good told me that my neighbour was sick. Not a big deal, lots of children at this age get the sniffles, and chicken pox was on most of these kids resumes. For about a week I sat, wondering..... with no life experience there's not much to wonder about, I can't remember what I thought about it all, all I can remember is that it was getting lonely counting to One Hundred.
Two weeks, about 2 weeks since he became sick I'm told that I'm not getting my neighbour back, ever. I don't know how I reacted, I don't know if I reacted, all I know is that I became aware of a new natural judgment. And it was going to become an even closer friend.
Grade 8, it was the second month of school and I hadn't a care in the world, or many friends. In the time between I had moved from towns, moved schools, and moved down the social ladder by leaps and bounds. I was a big cheese at my old school, but then again I had grown up with the rest of the cheese. This time around I was nothing but a seat filler in my classroom, having a few connections to keep me going, but not nearly enough to move me up. Which probably explains why my best friend was from a different school, and why I was always home by 4:00 to catch the latest episode of Pokemon, trust me, I knew every last Poke-name and Poke-Rap. I wake up on a Saturday and as usual I plan on calling the best friend to chill, perhaps on a hill. I go downstairs to watch some TV and I find my mother and father sitting in the living room. This doesn't seem like a big event, but at this time they're usually off doing grown up things, they both had a very decided look on their faces, so they called down my sister from her sleep to tell us both what they had decided.
My Father had been very sick this past month, and I had been told it was Pneumonia. With Anne and I on the couch, they calmly and gently told us that my father had lung cancer. Which explained the oxygen tube he had to use for the past few days. He quit smoking 9 years ago and it lay dorement in his chest for all this time. My sister burst into tears, I burst into nothing. She understood a seriousness that I had no idea of, hell I was so clueless that I still wanted to hang out at my friends that day. They told us that he was going into treatment to try and fight it, and I thought my Dad, being the strong Lithuanian that he was, never had a problem winning a fight in court, let alone an illness. Things were gonna be fine. Monday came around and I was told we didn't have to tell people just yet, keep it a family affair. Me being the forgetful child I was had no problem telling my friend Devon at recess while we were walking around the track. He asked how I was with all of this, and I specifically recall saying “pff, I'm fine, whenever I feel down I just bust it out with a good ol' POWERWALK!” as I began to speed away all comically like, hearing laugher far behind me.
Family members always get sick, but my Dad at this point had canceled his yearly trip to Las Vegas with all of his friends, they had gone every year since law school. Now I knew it was bad. Even if that didn't happen I probably would've picked up the fact that it was getting worse as I now had to push my father around the house in a wheelchair. This was escalating quickly. He moved into the other end of the house, for he couldn't make it to his own room anymore, and he couldn't sleep beside anyone because of the pain. My sister started staying home to help him with everyday tasks, which I thought was bogus because I still had to go to school. Although I was given the privilege of picking up his medication from IDA on the way home. I recall seeing the pain of even breathing in his eyes, my Dad was the strongest person alive, he was Captain of the University and High School football teams, he grew up as a farmer, an office wall full of diploma's, and had a lot of people to care about. This was the first time I had seen him ever be so unsure, unsure of survival. Our last Cat “Whiskey” was unsure of survival when she ran away for a night, and came back very sick. Mom found her hiding under the porch in the farthest and darkest corner. Ready and waiting die. My father wasn't ready nor waiting, but you wouldn't know that from his eyes.
The next few days consisted of my mom and dad getting their affairs in order. Wills, paperwork, boring adult stuff. The main thing I recall about this part was when it came time to call family & friends and tell them, since he was going in for treatment that Wednesday. The door to the living room was closed, as I walked in I saw my dad talking on the phone to his best friend Joe, his face was in his hand and there were tears in his eyes. My mom walked up to shut the door and told me my dad just needed to be alone for a little while. I was a little frazzled by it and went back to whatever I was doing.
Wednesday rolled around and my parents were off to Barrie for the first day of his treatment. My sis and I waved bye and got ready for a late night of TV and fun without the rents. Thursday rolled around, and so did my mom that evening, we were all going to Barrie that night, and she wasn't sure when we'd be back. We drove to the general Hospital there and arrived at the same time has my grandparents (my dad's parents), and all boarded the elevator together. I hate the way hospitals smell, nothings else in the world smells the way they do, because nothing else happens the same way as they do in hospitals. Tragedy's down every hallway where you can see people coming to the natural last resort of prayer. I was starting to get nervous. He went in for treatment to fight this thing just yesterday, I was told it was going to be a long a hard process, but we'd go through it as a family. We approached his room in slow motion, I was looking in the rooms on my left as we walked, there was an Indian family in the room beside his, they were all around a sick patient, some holding hands, some praying, some just staring. We got to my father's room and walked in, and this is where I had what alcoholics would call a moment of clarity. I pushed past the blue curtain and saw my dad lying there, immobile and hopped up on more morphine then you could shake a stick at. It hit me what was happening, holy shit did it ever hit me. I went into the washroom that was in his room and cried my eyes out. I was confused, scared, and now traumatized. My hero was not in the room over there, that's not my dad, this isn't happening, it can't.
My grandfather walked into the washroom I was in, I thought he had come in to comfort me, but he was silent. The man had fought poverty, sickness, and Hitler all in a lifetime, was this going to be what breaks him? It was awkward up until he reached over to the paper towels, grabbed two, dried his wrinkly old eyes with one of them, and handed me the other. Neither of us said anything, I was in grade 8, he was in his 80's, and for the first time since we've known each other we were on the exact same level. After a while I pulled myself together and walked back into the room. I stared at my father and got the exact same feeling as before, but I pushed the tears way back as I walked up. I asked him how he was, and he said something I couldn't understand, something along the lines of “hey Jon”. Everyone tried to talk to him for a little while, which there was little point to, he couldn't understand us and we couldn't him. The nurse was going to up the dosage of morphine due to the fact that even being conscious was too much pain for him to bear. The last thing I remember him saying before they knocked him out was “How are the cats?”. My mom responded with “They're fine dear, they're fine, relax”.
There was a oddly strong bond between my father and our cats (Izzy and Cleo). He was never a cat person, he grew up with dogs and preferred something that took orders. He never gave them much attention when we were around and they were never too cuddly with him either. This is why I believe that cat's weren't given the ability to speak, for they never had to say anything to understand everything. Whenever my sister and I would be in a yelling contest, Cleo would run up between us and starting meowing like crazy to make it stop, and we would. With dad it was different. I would sometimes walk downstairs very late at night to get a drink, and I would see my Dad watching TV with Izzy sprawled out on his lap, he was petting him like crazy. Something neither of them would do in public. The cats knew something we didn't, and we never will.
That night at the hospital I had to sleep on a cot with my mom that with built for barely half a person, let alone 2. Needless to say I didn't get much rest that night. The next little while consisted of Family and Friends visiting, an illness I had only known about for 2 weeks was crashing down on me person by person. I would wander the halls of the Hospital, buying issues of Mad magazine at the store they had (which I don't read anymore) and drinking Parlor chocolate milk from the cafeteria (which I refuse to drink anymore). I would read Foxtrot and play Game boy at the end of my dad's bed, and my sister would be reading books beside him holding his hand the entire time. She once pulled an all nighter doing just that. Which I didn't mind because I got to have a cot all to myself for a night.
My grandparents were staying in a guest room down the hall, and one day during visits, the room my dad was in was getting too crowded, so my sister and I went down to talk to them for a while. My grandfather told us amazing stories from the war, and from life, it seemed like an appropriate time to reflect. A very odd thing happened wtih people visiting though, the more people visited, the more people got admitted to that very hospital. Mr Sloazel, a University friend of my dad's was up visiting, but once when he came upstairs he was wearing a cast. Everyone was baffled but apparently he hurt something in his knee on a staircase in that very hospital. My aunt was admitted because of a mental breakdown, for her own brother had passed not but a month ago, and now this, I was far from the only one this illness was hurting.
There was a large cafeteria on the main floor of the Hospital that my mom, sister and I would eat at. It was an intensely depressing place, for the food wasn't the greatest, and most of the other guests were in some kind of crippling emotional pain. I recall how empty I felt when I went through the servery once, the cook cracked a joke as I pushed my Jello from one end to the other. It was a pretty funny joke, I remember because I was confused when I didn't express a single emotion to him. I was talking to my mom back at the table about what was going to happen to us. She tried to come up with some answers, but nothing too uplifting, “we'll pull through” kind of stuff. I thought about life back when we lived in Newmarket. We had a white house, a tree for climbing in the backyard, a pool, we were awesome at the family thing. I had tons of friends at school, I was in the advanced learning courses because I was so damn smart, hell, I even had a girlfriend. We were living it up as the Raciunas family, and there was no end in site. As I snapped back to reality I felt shittier than ever, I pushed my Jello aside and excused myself to the washroom where I proceeded to hit my head against a bathroom stall. Motherfuck.
Sunday, we had been there for 4 days and I was reading Foxtrot yet again at the foot of his bed. My mom was in the room, I remember that because she was the one who was talking to the doctor. He told her that his Kidney's were failing, and that there was nothing that could make them pass. My mom had already accepted my dad's fate, so she accepted the news with minimal tears. The shittiest part of this was that I had no idea what was just said, I wasn't paying much attention and I didn't know that we needed our kidney's to survive. Sunday turned into night and I was watching TV in the waiting room across the hall. My mom walked in and said “don't you want to spend the last time with your father beside him?”. This was news to me, “what do you mean?”. She told me that he wasn't going to make it, so naturally I flipped. I sat in the chair beside her crying and yelling “I'm not going to have a dad” and “what the fuck is going on?”. She calmed me down and said “lets just go be with him”, and we were. That night my mom and sister went to sleep, and I stood leaning against a wall, looking at him wheezing. I left the room and sat in a chair in the hallway. It hurt too much to cry anymore, and not crying was getting painful. So instead I went into shock. The nurse at the desk down the hall gave me some gravol to help settle my stomach. I took it, went to the washroom and threw that right up. Nothing was going to help at this point. Later into the night I went to a garden they had on that floor of the hospital, it had a huge wall of windows letting a lot of depressing moonlight in. This was the perfect spot. I leaned on a railing and stared out for about 30 min when my sister walked by. She had woken up and was looking for me. She walked up and grabbed my shoulder, “you okay?”. I didn't respond, I just stared at her, then back at the window. “Neither am I” she said.
Monday, his breathing had gotten so bad that when they would vacuum out his throat from all the build up it didn't sound any better. Oxygen sounded like glue when it went through his lungs. The doctor's said that cancer almost never takes out a person so quickly, but it had been in him for so long that this was just the breaking point. He only had 1 chemotherapy treatment in what was supposed to take around 6 years to complete. A Priest came by to give my father his last rights, a signal of the final stretch. Not much else happened that day, I had began a routine at the Hospital, so I just did what I normally did, and went to sleep on the cold hard cot. They had found another one for us so I was actually getting some rest every now and then.
Tuesday morning, the nurse woke us up at 5:30 am so we could spend the last few minutes with Zenon. His breathing was so horrible, like jogging and choking at the same time, his body was giving up on him. 50 years about to come to an end, and I was incredibly proud to know him for 12 of those. I was holding his hand as he took his last breath, not wanting to let go. I'll never understand Euthanasia, all I wanted at that moment was for him not to leave, he couldn't speak, he couldn't move, he wasn't even awake. His heartbeat was all I needed to keep me going. I never felt so powerless as when his soul left him. His suffering was over, and ours had just begun. That exact moment is when I became the person I was going to be for the rest of my life. An over-thinking, anxiety filled, tragedy ridden comedian. Mrs Belanger, a good family friend was going to drive us back to Collingwood that morning. As we walked out of the room I saw that same Indian family, they were still all there. I wondered how much longer they would be waiting, and what their outcome would be. She loaded us into the car and we headed off. I fell asleep on the ride home, and I didn't really want to wake up.
Days went by and we were getting everything in order, his wake is really something that's stuck in my head. The amount of people that came was phenomenal, really something to behold. Everyone from Judges that knew him (for he had to chance to soon become one himself), to staff from school. It was really hard seeing my friends walk the visiting line, I didn't know what to say to them, “Hey Joey, how are things with you?” didn't seem appropriate. After the line up beside the coffin bit was done I talked to a lot of friends from school, some I had never even really talked to before. One person in particular was Becca Groves, I don't remember what she said that made it stick in my head so well, all I know is that it was something that made me think how genuinely good people are at whole. Up next was the funeral, and to my astonishment it was more than a full house, it was jammed to the bursting point with people. Too many faces to remember, but not one to forget. When we walked out of the church behind the coffin I didn't know which way to look, I wanted to turn in all directions to see everyone, but I was afraid to make eye contact and let anyone see me. I knew they were all looking, but I didn't need to know. After the burial was complete I had quite the real-time flashback. A whole whack of my Newmarket friends and family had come up to see us, In particular there was my old best buds Brenden & Adrienne, and some other crazy familiar faces.
After all of the scheduled grieving was over I took some time off of school to get my shit back together. I quit the swimming team, for although it was one of the best things to do with my free time, I couldn't take the pressure or competition anymore. Something I kind of regret to this day. After about 2 weeks of time off I was supposed to go to the dentist that morning and then back to school for around lunch, as I was watching Jurassic Park before I was going to leave the doorbell rang. I answered it to find about 5 of my friends from school standing there, (Josh Tarlo, Ryan Murray, Devon Mcgann included). There was a field trip at some career place on Main Street so they split that to come see me. I left my house with them and it felt a whole lot better to get back to real life. I still spent every waking moment thinking about what had happened, so this was the very first time I pretended I was fine, and for the rest of my teenage days I'd be getting very good at it.
I grew up more in those 5 days at the hospital than I have in my entire life. I also believe it's what gave me my sense of humour. A way to cope with my demons instead of becoming some lame Emo jackass. I think about that a lot whenever we visit him at the Stayner Cemetery. My mom's done an unbelievable job of raising us on her own, keeping us in the same house that was supported on a Lawyer's salary. Even now she is moving on, with a new future husband, and more life to live than you can shake a stick at. My sister Anne is at University of Guelph and getting some pretty noice marks. As for me, I'm following all the childhood dreams I concocted so far, which makes me very proud. I know that my Dad is somehow responsible. One thing I can't explain though is what happened to my cat Izzy after Dad passed, he got very weird. He wondered where he was for about a week or two, and then slowly took on a totally different personality. He's still the same jittery little fucker around everyone else, but with us he's unbelievably fun and affectionate, he must know something that I don't.
Zenon Tomas Raciunas
1950 - 2000